The Sugar Bar

…what do you think? It’s the name of my new business. I’ve spent so many hours scouring the internet on tips and tricks. I have an insane amount of packaging and ingredients in my pantry. It’s like walking into a mini-Michael’s. I kind of love it. 🙂 I also have someone working on a logo for me and the website will be up and running soon enough. But, for now I’m focusing my efforts on products, packaging, marketing, and pricing.

I’ve been pretty hard at work in the kitchen these past few weeks. I’ve been testing recipes and flavor combinations on pretzels, cakes, cupcakes, cake pops, brownies, etc… and I have only made a small dent on the product testing but it feels good to have such positive responses.

I have another 2 dozen products that I need to test before solidifying my menu but this is definitely moving quickly and in a positive direction.

I’m making plans to expand my expertise. I have the difficult decision of whether I am going to continue pursuing my degree by taking summer classes at a local college or if I am going to invest a fair amount of money in The Wilton School Master Course program and supplemental courses they offer. I’ll still be continuing my education at Aurora University in the Fall 2012, either way.

I’ll definitely be taking classes at Michael’s over the next few months. I love to learn about decorating and the more I’ve done it, the better I’ve gotten. There’s been so much to learn about recipes and baking and chocolate. There are so many components to food and decorating. Confections are complicated business.

Still, I’m pretty excited. Walmart had an awesome sale on Philadelphia cream cheese sooo I may have over purchased. I think I came home with about 10 packs of cream cheese. So, you know what that means. Cheesecakes! I’ve been fatting my family up so much though that I think I will be gifting these cheesecakes so that I can get other peoples feed back on my products.

Let me know if you’re in the area and you’d be interested in taste testing! I have had a major surplus of products. Once I make them, critique them, do freshness tests (on some), and take pictures I would be happy to give them away.

Finally, meet some of my latest test products… some were a definite yes and others were a definite maybe.

I was testing how certain frostings retained their shape and taste at room temperate. My findings- chocolate ganache does NOT like humidity. This weekend I’ll be doing many different buttercreams. Oh, and the cream cheese frosting tasted amazing even a week after I made it. SOOO yummy. My boyfriend said those cupcakes looked like Pauly D’s hair. I agree. 

I found a great, amazing, moist, and delicious Red Velvet cake recipe. It works amazing for cupcakes and cakes HOWEVER… it created some atrocious cake pops and balls. I didn’t consider this a failure though because it works perfectly for cakes and cupcakes. After some recipe tweaking this will be perfect for the balls as well. 

I had a lot of fun testing pretzel flavors and different brands of chocolate. I think I tried… 6 different chocolate brands. And so many topping combinations. The HUGE favorite was butterscotch with Twix crumbles. These are sooo good. I’m still crunching the numbers for pricing but I think the flavors are set. Now I just have to come up with creative names. That’s the fun part 🙂

A close up of the milk chocolate with mini semi-sweet chips pretzel knot. Chocoholics dream.